are
six animals of red marble--a griffin, two lions, two lionesses, or what
seem such, and a second griffin. The central lions are well preserved,
highly realistic, but also decorative; one of them is crushing a large
ram, another an ox, both creatures splendidly rendered. I imagine these
central lions to be more recent (having perhaps replaced others) than
their neighbours, which are obliterated to the extent of being lions or
lionesses only by guesswork. These nameless feline creatures hold what
appear to be portions of sheep, one of them having at its flank a curious
excrescence like the stinging scorpion of the Mithra groups. The griffins,
on the other hand, although every detail is rubbed out, are splendid in
power and expression--great lion-bodied creatures, with gigantic eagle's
beak, manifestly birds rather than beasts, with the muscular neck and
probably the movement of a hawk. Like hawks, they have not swooped on
to their prey, but let themselves drop on to it, arriving not on their
belly like lions, but on their wings like birds. The prey is about a
fourth of the griffin's size. One of the griffins has swooped down
upon a wain, whose two wheels just protrude on either side of him; the
heads of two oxen are under his paws, and the head, open mouthed, with
terrified streaming hair, of the driver; beasts and men have come down
flat on their knees. The other griffin has captured a horse and his
rider; the horse has shied and fallen sideways beneath the griffin's
loins, with head protruding on one side and hoofs on the other, the
empty stirrup is still swinging. The rider, in mail-shirt and Crusader's
helmet, has been thrown forward, and lies between the griffin's claws,
his useless triangular shield clasped tight against his breast. Perhaps
merely because the attitude of the two griffins had to be symmetrical,
and the horse and rider filled up the space under their belly less
closely than the cart, oxen, and driver, there arises the suggestive
fact that the poor man and his bullocks are crushed more mercilessly
than the rich man and his horse. But be this as it may, poor and rich,
serf and knight, the griffin of destiny encompasses and pounces upon
each; and the talons of evil pin down and the beak of misery rends with
impartial cruel certainty.

Such is the account of the world and man, of justice and mercy, recorded
for us by the stonemasons of Ferrara.

VI

As with the emotional, the lyric element in Rena